Mathematics

When you subtract an amount from a number, that initial amount becomes less than. The act is called ‘take away’ or ‘subtraction’.

If you take things away from a man, for example, his dignity, name, and home, he becomes less than a man.

The DSM-IV quantifies depression as a mood disorder. It is a low-emotional state, characterised by significant levels of sadness, lack of energy and self-worth, and feelings of guilt.

The word depression comes from the Latin meaning to press down. When you subtract an amount from a number, that initial amount goes down. If you take things away from a person, for example, their dignity, name, and home, they are pressed down and become less than they were originally are or meant to be.

To understand subtraction and minus numbers, first look at patterns. There are patterns and sequences everywhere in life, including the number line, society, and nature. Patterns are in the heads of flowers. When you look at a sunflower's face, the seeds are often arranged in a spiral pattern, resembling a design made by a straight line intersecting on a graph. On almost every flower, the number of petals corresponds with the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence. The numbers include, but are not limited to, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. There are hard-wired non-negotiable patterns in nature that are visibly evident. Social scientists work to find patterns of behaviors in individuals. At a group level, this is how they come with their assessments, theories, and experiments and observations back it up.

Therapists and counsellors work with depressed individuals and try to get them to a balanced state. They visualise it as the person being in a minus (e.g., –9) number and will attempt to get them to 0. Coaches will now work with the person and get them to a positive state. The pattern is depression happens by either a chemical imbalance, unresolved issues, a lack of control, or learned helplessness. Sociologists may likely attribute patterns in society amongst groups of people, which can predict depression in another person to either of these factors.

Unfortunately, like depression, many people live in minus—a perpetual state of loss. In numbers, negative numbers have to work twice as hard to reach a normal state or become a positive number. Just as numbers, those living in subtracted countries often have to work harder than anybody else, often twice as hard or more than that, to be living in a positive situation. Even within a western climate, those living in third world conditions are living within negative bank accounts. Many less developed societies have been operating and working in a negative system, where they have to work twice as hard before they can even earn a living. We hear examples of people working a whole week and earning less than half a day's wage of most people in the U.K.

A minus number has to double to go up or before it can enter a positive state, and many people must work twice as hard before they can even feel positive. Communities living amongst the negative are in negativity, so these communities will invariably fall into a pattern. You will see these communities are high-crime, facing over-policing, facing a war on drugs, living in low housing, and anyone who manages to make it out of these situations either had to work more than twice as hard before being offered an opportunity. Those living in 'minus communities' are in a subtracted state; you hardly see positive news. You can find members of these communities in prison, graveyards, or other unfavourable situations.

Is it their fault when negativity surrounds them? To be positive means to be in a productive state or above zero on a number scale. It means to have feelings of love, pride, and optimism. Looking for opportunities and forward-thinking, but when you look at a number on the negative number scale with other numbers, they see either zero or negative.

Many communities have faced loss. Loss of land, loss of family, loss of tribes, and culture. Powers removed these groups from their homeland, suffered from loss of self, loss of name, loss of language, loss of self-control (controlled to be slaves), forgotten, and misnamed. When you hear their stories, do they fall into the same drug abuse patterns? Many Native Settlements in America are a breeding ground for teenage suicide rates. These communities have been mainly affected by the Coronavirus epidemic, so they face hardships on multiple fronts. Multiple documentaries highlight high suicide rates amongst teenagers living on Native reservations, surrounded by alcoholism, drug abuse, and a lack of opportunities.

The pattern is that depression happens by either a chemical imbalance, unresolved issues, a lack of control, or a learned helplessness. Sociologists may likely attribute patterns in society amongst groups of people, which can predict depression in another person to either of these factors.

- M. Olayinka